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Comment by eecc | Hacker News Reader

> he respect that a lot of software engineers enjoys in US/EU

And then you go on describing the average attitude towards software developers I perceived in the Netherlands… :)

I think it varies a lot between the countries. You can the difference even within German-speaking area. Recognition and the salaries (not sure about respect) are growing in Berlin and other large cities across Germany, but I heard that in Austria, software engineering is mostly seen as IT support cost centre.

I live in Austria. With the risk that comes from generalizations, I think you are mostly correct. They get respect from the general population, but when it comes to management and executives, software engineers are mostly seen as IT support, which is of course reflected in the very, very (!) low salaries.

There's this societal idea that "working in IT" is a good thing, but there is no distinction in most people's mind between different IT fields. Most people think that software engineers and people installing printers are more alike than similar.

I have an Austrian brother in law, he had a top position in a major Austrian company and he was ridiculously low paid.

He ended up moving to San Francisco where he's making 20x what he was making in Austria.

In my experience, in EU it’s just the average perception and you’ll find a good section of big companies having better views. In Japan it’s more like finding exceptions to the rule.

Could you elaborate?

I am not OP but I have noticed in several European countries that many companies see software engineering (and IT in general) as a "necessary evil". Even in SMEs selling automation solutions, the perception is that the "real" work is done by the mechanical/electrical engineers and the marketing department, while the software engineers are just...support people, aren't they? And everybody has learned a little bit of python programming at the university, no? /s

You need official certificates to be allowed to work with high voltage. But the program that controls that machine there, well, it can be written by some Germanistics student who can't find a job in his original field (no offense intended. I know several brilliant programmers who never studied. I just want to illustrate the difference).

If you understand this attitude, you will also understand why the general state of cybersecurity in such companies is such a problem.

I think this is common in the rest of the US/EU as well. The difference between how "tech" companies treat software engineers is very different from how "normal" companies treat software. Tech companies "get" that the difference between good and bad software is enormous and that it's worth doing the work to get good people to build it, other companies usually don't.

Can confirm this was the case in the US, made me promise myself to never take another software engineer role at a non “tech” company ever again which I’ve held to ever since.

They outsourced every possible role in software engineering and IT to India to the bare minimum where all that was left were the devs who worked on the firmware for gov related projects and regulatory concerns meant only US citizens could work on it. For the devs that were left, it was an uphill battle for resources and salaries while it felt like Sales and marketing were put on a pedestal when this company’s entire product was our work.

"Do not work in a department that's only seen as a cost center" is a maxim I live by too. Everyone up the reporting chain is being antagonized, including the C-suite. If you're not (directly) contributing to the profits, the bean-counters will try to reign-in your departmental expenses, including salaries and equipment.

More specifically: I'm also a cross-professional, having obtained a degree in Electronic Engineering and learned software engineering out of personal interest (obviously with significant knowledge gaps.) Yet, I still notice I'm patronizingly put down by "the grown ups" in management that cultivate an obvious disdain for the "techies" and "engineers" (as in "the steam engine operator shoveling coal into the furnace"), despising their poor intellectual and professional quality, while at the same time trying to price them out with all means possible.

whatever...

>But the program that controls that machine there, well, it can be written by some Germanistics student who can't find a job in his original field

I think you'll find that the people who write control software are mostly Electrical Engineers.

I spent a lot of time in Berlin where there's no industry, just software. I can imagine that the attitude is much different somewhere in the west or in the south.

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